Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed a veteran United Nations diplomat from Slovakia to head the United Nations political mission in Iraq.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said February 24 that Jan Kubis, who served as the top UN envoy in Afghanistan from 2012 to 2014, brings years of experience in diplomacy, foreign security policy, and international economic relations.

Kubis, a former foreign minister of Slovakia who served as secretary-general of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe from 1999 to 2005, will replace Bulgarian diplomat Nikolay Mladenov, who is about to take up the post of the UN's top Mideast envoy.

Kubis takes up the post as the United Nations is confronting a dire humanitarian crisis from the onslaught of the militant Islamist group Islamic State (IS), which controls a large part of northern Iraq.